Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee had a hearing on Section 702 of FISA. It basically went something like this:

It’s okay that we have a massive dragnet because the men running it are very honorable and diligent.

The men running the dragnet refuse to answer a series of straight questions, and when they do, they’re either wrong or deeply dishonest.

I’ll lay that out in more detail later.

But the most important example is an exchange between Ron Wyden and Dan Coats that will reverberate like Clapper’s now famous answer to Wyden that they don’t “wittingly” collect on millions of Americans. It went like this:

Wyden: Can the government use FISA 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?

Coats: Not to my knowledge. It would be against the law.

Coats’ knowledge should necessarily extend at least as far as Rosemary Collyer’s opinion reauthorizing the dragnet that Coats oversees, which was, after all, the topic of the hearing. And that opinion makes it quite clear that even under the new more limited regime, the NSA can collect entirely domestic communications.

Indeed, the passage makes clear that that example was presented in the memo tied to the certification about Section 702 that Coats signed (but did not release publicly). Effectively, Dan Coats signed a certificate on March 30 stating that this collection was alright.

I’m not sure what this example refers to. Collyer claims it has to do with MCTs, though like Dan Coats, she didn’t seem to understand the program she approved. There are multiple ways I know of where entirely domestic communications may be collected under 702, which I’ll write about in the near future.

In any case, if Dan Coats was being truthful in response to Wyden’s question, then he, at the same time, admitted that he certified a program without even reading the accompanying memorandum, and certainly without understanding the privacy problems with the program as constituted.

He either lied to Wyden. Or admitted that the current 702 certification was signed by someone who didn’t understand what he was attesting to.

Update: I did a version of this (including comment on Mike Rogers’ testimony) for Motherboard. It includes this explanation for Coats’ comment.

Section 702(b)(4) plainly states we ‘may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States.’ The DNI interpreted Senator Wyden’s question to ask about this provision and answered accordingly.

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https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-07-at-1.33.08-PM.png549991emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2017-06-07 13:33:542017-06-08 09:39:06Dan Coats Just Confirmed He Signed the Section 702 Certificate without Even Reading the Accompanying Memo

Coats, in his opening remarks, confirmed that the Trump administration is pushing for a “permanent reauthorization” of Section 702, which would prevent it from expiring.

…

Reversing his pledge, Coats said during Wednesday’s hearing that the government will not release a number, citing a lack of resources and the risk of violating the privacy of those whose identities are verified.

Coats claimed that that were “no instances of intentional violations of Section 702” since the 2008 amended law introduced the statute.

The rift stems from Sessions’s decision in March to recuse himself from the probe of possible ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, a decision Trump was unaware of until minutes before it occurred.

…

White House press secretary Sean Spicer earlier Tuesday refused to say if Trump has full confidence in Sessions.

“I have not had discussions with him about that,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing. “If I have not had a discussion with him, I tend not to comment on it.”

“She was afraid she was going to disappear, that they were going to make her disappear. And she felt like she needed to give them what they were asking for at the time,” Winner-Davis said. (her mother)

No matter one’s opinions on the propriety of the charges against her, we should all agree Winner should be released on bail pending trial. Even if you take all the government allegations as true, it’s clear she is neither a threat to public safety nor a flight risk. To hold a citizen incommunicado and indefinitely while awaiting trial for the alleged crime of serving as a journalistic source should outrage us all.

Indeed.
And with some 500,000 contractors out there with security clearance maybe a “probabalistic setup” was in play. Some civic-minded person would be unable to resist the bait. And the NSA would be waiting.